There are many words we can use to describe our cat, Pickle. She is talkative, active, cute, warm, however, she is not a cat who naturally comes close to us.

My wife often wishes Pickle would come and cuddle with her more often. One night, after feeding pickle with her favorite chicken can, she fell asleep almost immediately, my wife said “Why does Pickle only want her chicken can, but rarely come close to us?”. Maybe because that was a Sunday, she said this in a Christian tone instead something more casual. I realized the scene my wife described mirrors our spiritual lives, how we see Pickle is usually how God see us.

What makes Pickle special to us? Is her cuteness? No, there are so many cute cats. The fact that we feed her? No, we could dump food to strays and they will be really happy. What makes the difference is that she lives under the same roof with us. It’s our relationship, we are her parents.

Similarly, what makes Christian different from the others? This question puzzled me a lot before my baptism. God is merciful, God is faithful, and what makes Him different from other ‘gods’ people worship? In my culture background, people go to temple for something specific. But our Father leads us to grow into a brand new god-like form beyond just offering us daily needs.

Sadly, after realizing this, my prayers shifted too far in the other direction. I started avoiding praying for specific things, but only for “spiritual development”. This drifted too far away from my life of reality, and disconnected these two pieces. All prayers and scriptures stop at the surface, and seldomly reached deeper. From my aspect, this is even worse than only praying for daily needs, which makes it too easy to disconnect from God. It might sounds fine to pray only for spiritual matters. But if Pickle never meowed for her food in front of us, how could her grow close to us.

This leads me back to the standard answer to most many questions in Christianity — balance. It may sounds like a cliche, but unfortunately, I had to learn this in a hard way.

Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” — Exodus 33:15-16 NIV

Moses prayed so much when God promises the Israel the land of Cannan, but withdrew his presence from them. Because this left Israel nothing different from the others. Father’s offering flow through the relationship, thus the relationship is more precious than anything we gained from it.

Back to Pickle, we never complained about feeding her, or any means of taking care of her. In fact, we would even feel lonely if she didn’t want us to do so. It is the same with God.

Prayers for both spiritual and physical are necessary, just like we like our cat to comes for cuddling, and meows us for food.